Linda Chavez

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This article is about the former Reagan Administration official, Fox News Contributor, Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity, Secretary of Labor and U.S. Senate nominee. (For the current unionist of a similar name . For Linda Chavez-Thompson, see Linda Chavez (disambiguation).

Linda Chavez (born June 17, 1947 in Albuquerque, New Mexico) is a prominent Hispanic-American conservative author, commentator, and radio talk show host. She is of Spanish (father's side) and Anglo-American (mother's side) ancestry, was the highest-ranking woman in President Ronald Reagan's White House for a time, and was the first Hispanic female nominated for a position in the United States Cabinet.

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[edit] Education

Chavez earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Colorado in 1970. Chavez attended graduate school at UCLA.

[edit] Background with labor unions

Starting in 1975, Chavez was employed within the inner circles of the United States second largest teachers' union, the American Federation of Teachers, where she was responsible for editing that organization's publications[1] [2]. She was a confidante of Al Shanker[3] the AFT's president. While she believed in President Shanker's personal philosophy of trade unionism, she eventually came to feel that many in the organization were intent on moving the union in another direction after Shanker's inevitable departure. She later wrote that the more she learned about the goals of these newer union leaders, the less she felt comfortable in the organization. She left the AFT in 1983.

[edit] Career in Republican administrations

Chavez has held a number of appointed positions, among them White House Director of Public Liaison (1985), under President Ronald Reagan; Staff Director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1983-1985) appointed by President Reagan; and Chairman of the National Commission on Migrant Education (1988-1992) under President George H.W. Bush. Concurrently with some of these positions she served as a member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (1984-1986) under President Reagan. In 1992, she was elected by the United Nations Human Rights Commission to serve a four-year term as U.S. Expert to the UN Sub-commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.

In August 1993, the committee asked Chavez to study systematic rape, sexual slavery and slavery-like practices during wartime, including internal armed conflict. As Special Rapporteur, Chavez reporting regularly for nearly four years to different committee meetings. In May 1997, Chavez asked that the final report be finished and delivered by a colleague and was granted permission to withdraw from the project. On June 22, 1998, Gay J. McDougall, Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, released the final version of Contemporary Forms of Slavery[4], a paper that was mainly aimed at bringing wider attention to the lasting harm to human rights caused by Japan's comfort women program during World War II. The report detailed the official Japanese government stance against individual compensation of surviving comfort women as well as the UN's own legal position regarding Japan's guilt and liability. MacDougall was awarded a MacArthur Fellows Program "genius" grant the year after delivering the joint study.

In 2001, President George W. Bush nominated Chavez for Secretary of Labor. She was the first Hispanic female nominated to a United States cabinet. She withdrew the nomination after it was revealed, through her neighbor Peggy Zwisler, that she had allegedly given money to an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who lived in her home a decade earlier. Chavez contended that she had not actually employed the woman, but had merely provided her with emergency assistance due to the domestic abuse the woman had been facing at the time.[5] The woman (who is now a legal resident of the United States[6]) also insists she was not an employee of Chavez,.[5] and credits Chavez with helping her at a time when she needed it most. A subsequent follow-up of the matter by the FBI found Chavez was not guilty of any wrongdoing.

Chavez was also the head of President George Bush's taskforce on immigration while he ran for president in 2000, and has met with the president on a number of occasions to discuss immigration reform.

[edit] Run for U.S. Senate

In 1986 Chavez ran as a Republican for the United States Senate against Democrat Barbara Mikulski in the state of Maryland . It was the first time in modern U.S. history that two women faced each other in a U.S. Senate general election. The historic campaign drew national attention, with Linda Chavez leaving her post as the highest ranking women in Ronald Reagan's White House in an attempt to win the open U.S. Senate seat in the liberal-leaning state of Maryland.

In an article quoting Chavez's claim that Mikulski was a "San Francisco-style George McGovern liberal", the Washington Post reported that Chavez was directly implying that the never-married Mikulski was a lesbian. Chavez was accused of making allegations about Mikulski's sexual orientation a central issue of the campaign. In defending her use of the phrase, Chavez suggested the line "San Francisco Democrats" was a reference to Jeane Kirkpatrick's 1984 Republican National Convention "Blame America First" speech, in which Kirkpatrick coined the phrase "San Francisco Liberal" which is not a euphemism for gay [1]

However, much of the media following the campaign picked up on the Post's story and ran with it, not realizing "San Francisco liberal" is widely understood to refer to one's liberal Democratic political beliefs, rather than anything having to do with one's sexuality [2]

Mikulski easily defeated Chavez; however, Chavez received more votes than any Republican in Maryland in over a generation. [7].

[edit] Recent activities

In 2000, Chavez was named a Library of Congress Living Legend.[8]

[edit] Columnist and commentator

Chavez is a syndicated columnist and a Fox News political commentator. She quit PBS's "To the Contrary" after a May 13, 2000 incident when the host, Bonnie Erbé, asserted on air that Chavez was more likely to be hit by lightning than raped at her age.[9] The comment was made during a discussion on gun control and whether it was necessary for Chavez to obtain a gun to defend herself against a potential rape. Chavez and Erbé argued on the opposite sides of the gun ownership issue.

[edit] Political Action Committees and non-profit foundations

Linda Chavez is the chairman and founder of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank devoted to issues of race and ethnicity. The Center is the leading conservative organization fighting against race-based public policies, known as "affirmative action" in contracting, employment, higher education, and K-12. Under Linda Chavez's leadership, the Center for Equal Opportunity has released dozens of studies documenting the extent to which race is a factor in college admissions, at over 60 colleges and universities [3] .

Chavez is also the founder and Chairman of Stop Union Political Abuse (SUPA), a federally registered Political Action Committee, and is the founder of several other PACs and organizations. In August 2007, the Washington Post reported that Chavez and her immediate family members, through political action committees they had created, including the Republican Issues Committee, the Latino Alliance, Stop Union Political Abuse, and the Pro-Life Campaign Committee, had raised $24.5 million from January 2003 to December 2006. $242,000 (approximately 1%) was given to politicians. The Post also listed the salaries of her family members. The PACs paid Chavez's family members $261,237 (approximately 1% of the money raised and about $10,000 per family member, per year).

The Post also reported that over the past two years, the Federal Election Commission has fined three of the PACs for a total of $262,500 for failing to file timely reports and for not promptly disclosing all the money raised and spent. The FEC found no intentional wrongdoing.[10]

In addition to the income from the PACs, the Post reported that Chavez and her family had been paid as executives of four nonprofit foundations founded by Chavez and her family. Between 1997 and 2003, Chavez's salary from the Center for Equal Opportunity foundation ranged from $125,000 to $136,250. In 2004, the last year for which records were available to the Post, she was paid $70,313. That foundation also paid her son David $83,200 in 2004. From 1998 to 2001, Chavez's husband, Chris Gersten, was paid $64,000 a year from another family foundation, the Institute for Religious Values. Between 2003 and 2006, the four foundations, combined, raised about $350,000 per year.[11]

In January 2008, Chavez and her husband said that they were closing down some of their fundraising operations.[12]

[edit] Affiliations

Chavez is on the Boards of Directors of two Fortune 1000 companies, Pilgrim's Pride and ABM Industries. Pilgrims Pride is the largest poultry producer in the United States, and ABM Industries is the 2nd largest property management company in the United States. Chavez is a past Board member of Greyhound Lines as well as the Foundation for Teaching Economics.

Chavez sits on the Boards of several non profit organizations, including the Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy,[13] and was named to the advisory board of the Bruin Alumni Association.[14]

[edit] Family

She is married to Christopher Gersten, who heads the Institute for Religious Values, and is the mother of three adult sons, David, Pablo, and Rudy. Her husband is Jewish. She is also a grandmother of eight and resides with her family in Purcellville, Virginia.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] References

  1. ^ Radosh, Ronald. "A Uniquely American Life", American Outlook, Hudson Institute, Winter 2003. 
  2. ^ Conservative Chronicle[dead link]
  3. ^ Chavez, Linda (2002). An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal (Or How I Became the Most Hated Hispanic in America). Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465089031. 
  4. ^ Gay J. McDougall. Report of the Special Rapporteur on systematic rape (HTML). Retrieved on 2007-11-12.
  5. ^ a b Fournier, Ron. "Chavez Withdraws As Labor Nominee", The Washington Post, 2001-01-09. Retrieved on 2006-11-22. 
  6. ^ Meckler, Laura. "Bush standing by Chavez; advisers seek facts", Associated Press, The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, 2001-01-09. 
  7. ^ Signorile, Michelangelo. "Linda Chavez: Homophobic Career", 2001-01-09. Retrieved on 2006-11-22. 
  8. ^ Awards and Honors, Library of Congress: Linda Chavez. Library of Congress (2000).
  9. ^ Bozell III, L. Brent. "Liberal incivility reigns at PBS TV", Human Events, 2000-06-16. Retrieved on 2007-08-17. 
  10. ^ "In Fundraising's Murky Corners: Candidates See Little of Millions Collected by Linda Chavez's Family, Washington Post, August 13, 2007
  11. ^ "In Fundraising's Murky Corners: Candidates See Little of Millions Collected by Linda Chavez's Family, Washington Post, August 13, 2007
  12. ^ Matthew Murray, "Linda Chavez to Halt Fundraising", Roll Call, January 2008
  13. ^ The National Campaign To Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Playing Catch-Up: How Children Born to Teen Mothers Fare
  14. ^ Bruin Alumni Advisory Board Member - Linda Chavez. Bruin Alumni Association.

[edit] External links

Persondata
NAME Chavez, Linda
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION American political commentator
DATE OF BIRTH 1947-06-17
PLACE OF BIRTH Albuquerque, New Mexico
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
Languages